New details emerge on Meta’s $14.3B deal for Scale

Meta’s deal to partially purchase the AI startup Scale, giving it 49% possession, is actually uncommon.

What Scale formally announced is that the deal values the corporate at over $29 billion and that it’ll “distribute” proceeds to shareholders and vested fairness holders (aka staff) granting them with “substantial liquidity” whereas permitting them to proceed as shareholders.

Meta can be hiring Scale’s famed founder CEO Alexandr Wang, who famously dropped out of MIT at age 19 to construct the corporate, which presents AI coaching information verified by people.

This would possibly sound like Meta would purchase shares from current shareholders, however that’s not the case, sources told Bloomberg. Traders are getting dividends, TechCrunch has confirmed. For example Accel, which backed the corporate early, ought to get a payout of $2.5 billion, Bloomberg studies. (Accel declined to remark.)

Scale has dozens of backers, together with Amazon and Meta, and was last valued at $14 billion after raising a $1 billion Collection F a 12 months in the past. So a dividend payout of this magnitude is nearly like shopping for the corporate. We’ll have to attend and see if regulators agree.